Mark WiedmerTo most of us, Jumoke Johnson was a notorious gang member of the Rollin 60s Crips who was murdered three weeks ago, along with his close friend Christopher Woodard.
Given the 23-year-old Johnson’s brief and turbulent life, that description of him would not appear to be an overly unfair summation. But to Brainerd High School senior basketball player Kentrell Evans, Johnson was a cousin and a friend.
“It isn’t what they make it out to be,” he said early Saturday afternoon. “Each of them (Johnson and Woodard) has a family that loves and cared for them and a family that they made happy. We played basketball when I was younger. (Woodard) would talk trash with me. I liked the Warriors; he liked the Cavs. He could always make you laugh.”
There wasn’t much laughing at Olivet Baptist Church on Saturday morning. Instead, there was an impressive gathering of many of our city’s best high school basketball players, including Evans, from Brainerd, Howard and Tyner.
Over two insightful hours, the group enjoyed a bountiful lunch catered by Big Jeff Barbecue (Jeff Bowens’ son Jalen plays for Tyner), as well as discussing friendship and character and the need to find common ground before any more of this community’s young people wind up six feet under ground.
“I’m calling it the ‘Brotherhood Brunch,'” said Brainerd assistant coach LaDarius Price, whose foundation PEAK (Placing Emphasis Around Kids) has done so much to foster brotherhood, sisterhood and hope among Chattanooga’s most economically disadvantaged youth.
“Most of these kids have grown up together playing middle school ball and little league sports. Now they’re at separate high schools. But they’re only going to have a Brainerd, Howard or Tyner jersey on for four years. Then they’re going to have to work together in our community for the rest of their lives.”
So they all came to Olivet to listen to Pneuma Christian Center pastor Ivan Brown discuss the dire need for better character throughout all of society, regardless of race, creed, age or gender.
“I believe character development is the missing piece to success,” said the 42-year-old Brown, who grew up in Washington, D.C., graduated from Howard University, lived for a time in Los Angeles, served in the military, worked for the government and has called Chattanooga his home for the past 10 years.
“It’s extremely concerning, what we’ve seen over the past 25 or 30 years,” Brown said. “A lot of it is due to poverty and lack of a father figure in these young people’s lives. If we’re going to change things, it has to start with this generation breaking the cycle of having absentee fathers. We’re not just one generation now. In many cases, we’re entering our second, third and fourth generation of fatherless kids.
“Even in my generation – Generation X – if a father wasn’t there, there was probably a grandfather. Now there seems like all too often there’s no male figure.”
Saturday’s gathering of about 30 young men seemed to back up that belief.
When Brown asked how many of these players had their biological fathers in their lives, no more than six raised their hands. That was largely in line with Brainerd head coach Levar Brown’s belief that no more than three of his 14 players had any involvement with their biological dads.
“With as much gang violence as we have,” Price said, “I want our players to grow up to be strong men, strong husbands, strong fathers, strong leaders in our community. But in all honesty, I think this will get worse before it gets better. So many of these young men are raising themselves. The villages we say are needed to raise a child are nonexistent. There are no positive male role models for far too many of these kids.”
Howard coach Walter “Moose” McGary is 66 now. He grew up in Birmingham, Ala., but has spent most of his life in our town, starting with a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Hall of Fame career playing for the Mocs in the early 1970s.
“To me, the family as we knew it – mother, father and children all living together – began disappearing in the early 1970s,” McGary said. “There was a change in society. It was all about being carefree with no strings attached. Too many men took a nonexistent role in their kids’ lives.”
McGary said he worries so much about the lives many of his students lead that “I feel like if I miss a day of school something tragic might happen. I try every day to tell them that I love them. I try to be the father figure they don’t have in their lives.”
A 2006 white paper published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services noted that “children with good relationships with their fathers were less likely to experience depression, to exhibit disruptive behavior or to lie and were more likely to exhibit pro-social behavior.”
It also observed: “Boys with involved fathers had fewer school behavior problems and that girls had stronger self-esteem. In addition, numerous studies have found that children who live with their fathers are more likely to have good physical and emotional health, to achieve academically and to avoid drugs, violence and delinquent behavior.”
Yet here we are in 2017, seemingly with more young people than ever running around without their biological fathers in their lives.
“Kids break into tears when I hit that point of pain,” Ivan Brown said. “But I’m always going to have hope. I believe a village can raise a child. We just have to get our villages more involved.”
Brown and his wife Kilzma are involved with their daughters Reagyn (9) and Lacye (5) every hour of every day.
Perhaps because of that, Ivan Brown wrapped up his talk by telling the group: “You all will be the next generation of fathers. Are your kids going to grow up without fathers?”
It’s never as simple as it sounds. Some gang members have fathers in their lives. Many kids with no fathers stay clear of gangs and trouble. And however angered we are by the violent life and death of Jumoke Johnson, like almost every other person on the planet, he had family and friends who loved him, whose hearts are broken by his passing.
Said Brainerd’s Levar Brown of the emotional strength and goodness displayed by Evans and his teammates in these difficult times: “They have a great understanding of their position in the community. They know the younger generation is looking up to them.”
Now if we could just find more people worthy of being looked up to and emulated by the young men and women of Brainerd, Howard, Tyner and the rest of our high school students.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com